They would descend nearly a kilometer into the earth before arriving at a set of blast doors leading to what had originally been conceived as a storage facility for Japan’s nuclear waste. After the Fukushima disaster, though, many of the country’s plants had been shut down, leaving the complex largely idle.

It was then that he’d had control transferred to the defense forces under the cover of making certain the radioactive refuse was secure. The real reason was that he needed a replacement for the Reactor Four lab that had been lost. A replacement that offered both foolproof containment and distance from prying eyes.

It took another ten minutes to reach the entrance, and Takahashi could feel the cold from the cave beginning to penetrate his uniform. Or maybe it wasn’t the temperature at all. Maybe it was something more.

The massive doors opened automatically as the vehicle approached and they glided to a stop inside. Before his takeover of the facility, this section had been lined with concrete. All that was gone now, replaced by the natural dirt and rock.

As they continued deeper into the earth on foot, the passageway constricted until it was only two meters across. Ahead, one of his men paused at a turn and then signaled that it was safe to proceed. Living surrounded by constant security made Takahashi feel like a coward, but there was little choice at this point. Most of his meetings were now being held at his heavily secured home. This trip, though, had been unavoidable. Moving Dr. Ito was becoming too difficult to do with the required efficiency and anonymity.

They finally came to a door made of a reddish woven material—the same material his limousine had been constructed of. His men fanned out, taking up strategic positions along the corridor while he pressed his thumb against a screen set into the wall.

Inside, the light was much better, though the walls remained the necessarily unadorned dirt and rock. The only furniture was a wooden table surrounded by similarly constructed chairs. The two men seated in them immediately stood and bowed.

Takahashi returned the bow, nodding at his intelligence czar, Akio Himura, and then walking over to Hideki Ito. He put a hand warmly on the scientist’s back. “How are you, Doctor?”

“I’m well, General. Thank you for asking.”

Of course it wasn’t true—a reality that was very unfortunate for their cause. Ito was entirely bald from successive rounds of chemotherapy, and his face seemed to have collapsed in places, creating strange hollows where the muscles had selectively atrophied. The pigmentation in his skin also seemed to have been short-circuited by the massive dose of radiation he’d received in Reactor Four, leaving light and dark splotches of various sizes on his cheeks and bare scalp.